Press Releases

Rubicon Project (NYSE: RUBI), the Global Exchange for Advertising, today announced that in the first half of 2018, its Estimated Market Rate (EMR) feature yielded an average of 20 percent savings for buying platforms over pure first-price auctions, with less than a 1 percent trade-off in win rates. Improved performance has driven swift adoption of the feature, which is now used by 50 percent of DSPs on the company’s platform. Rubicon Project also noted that EMR benefits sellers by helping buyers to spend more efficiently and sustainably over time. Since EMR launched in January 2018, the company has distributed more payments to sellers than any first half in its history.

Rubicon Project developed EMR’s algorithm to help buying platforms achieve better outcomes in a marketplace where competing in a second, downstream auction has become the norm. The feature works by using machine learning to analyze factors such as inventory type, target audience and CPM, and then finding opportunities to decrease buyers’ initial bids without sacrificing their competitiveness downstream.

“As an exchange, we have a broader view of the marketplace than many of the largest buying platforms,” said Adam Soroca, Head of Global Buyer Team for Rubicon Project. “The power of EMR is that it harnesses this vast dataset of auction outcomes and applies it — in real time — to help buyers achieve fair market rates. Ultimately, this means better outcomes for buyers, and more stable, predictable demand for sellers.”

Though Rubicon Project developed EMR for DSPs that hadn’t yet tuned their bidding logic for first-price auctions, the company noted that platforms of all kinds now use the feature alongside their state-of-the-art, first-price-enabled algorithms. Because the feature is optional and it uses the DSPs’ initial bids as a starting point, buying platforms retain a high degree of control.

“Rubicon Project’s innovative EMR feature proves their commitment to helping us achieve the best possible performance for our clients,” said Lewis Rothkopf, General Manager of Media and Growth Channels at MediaMath. “The technology has yielded us added buying efficiency versus pure first-price while still delivering our campaigns in full. This equates to millions in value for our clients, and it’s why our systems will look to optimize towards those supply paths that protect against overpayment in a first-price environment.”